The "Live-Anywhere" Boat - The Trip South, Part VIII, Salinas, Puerto Rico, to Culebra, Vieques, and Back
Updated April 19, 2009
Salinas Street Scene

Salinas is a very secure harbor and a very crowded one, with many cruisers passing through and many more who have settled there for a longer or shorter time ("I came here for a week five years ago"). The actual city of Salinas is some distance inland, but the village of Playa Salinas is a maritime center with a good atmosphere. There are many restaurants on the harbor, most of them with their own docks, and in between them there are boatyards, official or unofficial, with guys molding boats or working on engines.

The harbor is so enclosed that it is hard to think that any storm could do too serious damage, and if we were here during a hurricane I'd think the most serious risk would be other boats


Salinas
less well anchored. Some of the boats we saw seemed to be unattended, perhaps left in a safe place while their owners were away.

The all-but-official center of the cruising world in Salinas is Drake's, a bar run by Luis and Nancy (I don't know who Drake was, if there ever was one). It has everything a sailor wants: fast internet, cheap beer, and good food. In a clear understanding of its market, it is open from 5:00 to whenever, and is the kind of place where someone would come up to you and say, "I want to use Skype -- will that interfere with your internet use?"

We stayed 3 nights in Salinas. We explored the town a little,


Drake's Bar -Salinas
did some shopping, got our forwarded mail and responded to it, and did some of the business things that require internet access. Then we decided we were a little tired of the noise and we went down to the entrance of the harbor so as to get an early start the next day.

This anchorage was beautiful and very quiet, with lots of birds, and we could have found several reasons to stay there, but we had a deadline to get to Culebra (friends from Maine were going to be there), so the


Egret Near Salinas

next day we set off. This proved to be an interesting day, as early on we had a problem with the inverters, the devices that change our batteries' 24 volts to 120 volts of AC. We don't use the AC for much, but a few of our systems do depend on it, and suddenly we were aware of the complexity of the floating eco-system that is our boat. For the moment we ran the generator whenever we needed AC, but that was not going to be a long-term solution.
Puerto Patillas
On this run we saw something neither of us had ever seen; in the calm water the flying fish stood erect and more-or-less shimmied on their tails to get another hop instead of soaring off the crest of each sea. We went east to Puerto Patillas, a fishing village with only a few vacation condos, another short hop that got us in before the winds built up. There I changed the oil in the engine and generator, and did some other maintenance. We were circled twice by an ominous black helicopter, and just after dark we were boarded by FURA. Again they were happy to find our documentation in order and we parted friends. We must be the best-documented boat on the Puerto Rican coast.

The next day we intended to go on to Culebra and started out before daylight, but the sea was quite heavy and heading into it did not seem like a good idea if there was an alternative, so we went back and anchored again.


Mamacita's Bar and Restaurant - Culebra
We felt a little vindicated when we noticed the fishermen did not go out to the reefs where they make their living that day, and the next day we left in better conditions (the fishermen went out too) and (except that we were again accosted by FURA, but this time not boarded) had an uneventful passage to Culebra. We anchored in Ensenada Honda off the town of Dewey at 2:45 and settled down to find what this place was all about.

We went ashore to a waterfront bar called the "Dinghy Dock," thinking only to have a beer at happy hour, and found an old friend in Rob, who had been in charge of the first Wooden Boat Show I ever attended in Newport, RI, in the mid-80s. He and his wife Sarah were by chance vacationing and like us escaping the Maine winter. We were happy to spend quite a bit of time with them in the next few days.

The next day it was time to solve the inverter problem, so I disconnected the one with the problem and hot-wired the other into the output circuit (there was no problem with the DC circuitry). This was an all-day job, because the inverters and the paralleling box are hard to get to. With hindsight, if I had had any idea how much attention the inverters would require I would have put them in a more accessible place, the only change I would make in the engine room layout. That evening Rob and Sarah came aboard for drinks.

On the Sunday (we are now at March 29th) we explored Dewey, the town on Culebra, named by the Navy for the Admiral. We did a little shopping and managed to find yeast, hitherto unobtainable in Puerto Rico and essential for Barbara's bread-making.


Mamacita's From the Street - Culebra
We were in a hurry to get to Culebra because our friend Gretchen (my editor at Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors) and her husband were there on vacation visiting their old cruising .friends Roger and Gigi. Sunday afternoon they visited for drinks on the boat; we have really become quite social. It is a real pleasure to show the boat to people with the experience to understand her and to see her abilities and potential.
Street in Dewey - Culebra

The Plaza Where the Ferry Comes In - Culebra



"Art" - Culebra

Door - Culebra
Thinking we needed a reward after spending a whole day on the inverters (well, at least I thought we did), we had lunch Monday at Mamacita's, a restaurant on the canal that runs through Dewey and has resident iguanas. Because the place is on the canal one can simply dinghy there and tie up in complete calm, but the real positive is that the lunch was excellent and the iguanas (although shy) interesting. There is something about coming into a wharf and seeing a two-foot long lizard looking like a miniature dinosaur sitting on the fence that is definitively different from anything you would see in Maine. As the lunch crowd grew he (she?) dove into the canal but could be seen later lying on the branch of a tree trying to be invisible. A large sign said "Do NOT feed the iguanas!"
The Post Office - Culebra

"Snake" on the Beach - Culebrita
We happily poked around in Dewey and then sat out a rainy, squally day. The next day was Barbara's birthday, and since it dawned fair, we weighed anchor early and set off out the narrow channel toward Culebrita, the small island east of Culebra.

Culebra itself is heavy with condo development, but Culebrita (a park and natural preserve) is enchanting and reminded us of the British Virgin Islands in the 80s, before the expansion of the airport and the exponential growth of the charter boat industry made them so crowded and developed. There are white sand beaches that are practically deserted and acres of coral reef, teeming with colorful fish. Some of the coral is getting overgrown with algae, alas, but there is still lots that is pristine and thriving.


Barbara Anchored Off Culebrita
We went ashore and explored the beach, then climbed the old road, now completely overgrown except for a narrow path, leading up to the lighthouse (built in 1880, according to one guidebook). The soil is stony and dry and much like the deserts of the American Southwest, with lots of cacti.

Our road was an easy climb, because it had been made (presumably) for mule-drawn carts and had several switchbacks on the way to the top. At the top we found, besides a splendid view, the derelict keeper's house, with the remains of its support systems (rusted fuel tanks, bits of piping) all around it and the lighthouse tower in the middle.


The View From Near the Lighthouse - Culebrita
Beside the house is a (much later) helipad, and clearly someone is making efforts to clear the debris and stack it around the pad, so it can eventually be air-lifted off the island.

The light still works, and the little tower on top of the house is surrounded by solar panels. The house itself was clearly pretty luxurious, and the keeper's job would be much more pleasant than at many Maine lighthouses we could think of.

After lunch we went around to the other side of Culebra to a reef where we had heard the snorkeling was particularly good and spent the afternoon there, alternately swimming and resting.

That night we went back to the harbor at Dewey, one of many many coves called "Ensenada Honda" (lit. "deep cove") in Puerto Rico. We had a celebratory dinner at Mamacita's and the next morning slipped out of the harbor and across to Isabel Segunda, the capital of the Island of Vieques.


Blooming Cacti - Culebrita


Culebrita Lighthouse

Bridge in Isabel II - Vieques
This pretty little town was founded in the mid-19th century as a Spanish colonial capital and is situated on a hillside cut by several lush gorges. Above it is the last fort the Spanish built in the western hemisphere, El Conde de Mirasol. The harbor is home to a dozen or so small fishing boats, and as we arrived we saw several boats coming in and unloading fish and air tanks (the fishery involves diving) at the wharf of the fishermens' co-op.
Isabel II Harbor & Lighthouse - Vieques

The Plaza, Isabel II - Vieques

Isabel II is set on a hill overlooking the water and is cut by two (at least) rivers, so it is a town of many bridges and of backyards where the treetops are at eye level. We walked around and found a circuitous way up to the fort, which is now a museum and has a wonderful view in every direction. It was never, we discovered, really finished, and was even used as a prison down to the 1940s. It was then abandoned, but now has been restored and houses a museum of Vieques history, where we learned that the first human habitation was some 4,000 years ago, or about 2,000 B.C.

Inside the Wall at El Conde de Mirasol - Vieques
We spent a pleasant day walking around Isabel II. We found a pleasant bar/restaurant where we could eat empanadillas for a late lunch in a tree-shaded courtyard (the surroundings were great but the empanadillas were not all that good). After lunch we found our way, with some help from a map provided by the tourist office, to the large and elaborate cemetery on a hillside overlooking the harbor that we had seen from the boat.
Street Scene, Isabel II - Vieques
This turned out to be the Municipal Cemetery and to be a remarkable miniature city of crypts, monuments, and some plain tombstones with little alleys and stairways running apparently almost at random among them. It was all very elaborate and slightly unkempt, much like its host city. The Italian engraver Piranesi would have loved it.
City of the Dead - the Isabel II Municipal Cemetery - Vieques
The next morning we set off early to round the eastern tip of Vieques and run west along the south coast, taking advantage of favorable winds and current. We had a pleasant run along the north shore, seeing clearly the demarcation linle between the former bombing range on the east end and the populated area to the west. Suddenly the shore was deserted, with a few dirt roads being the only sign of human activity - a big change from the developed coast of the remainder of the island.
The Eastern Tip of Vieques
We intended to anchor in a very pleasant bay just west of the eastern tip of Vieques, but as we nosed our way in past the reefs we were called on the radio by Vieques Range Control and told in no uncertain terms that we were in restricted waters and would have to leave. This surprised us, since we knew anchoring there had been allowed when the base was active except on those days when it was actually being used, but we consoled ourselves with the thought that the "explosive activities" underway concerned clearing of unexploded ordinance.
A Deserted Cove in the Former Bombing Range - Vieques
We were a little disappointed, but with the advice of the Controller we found a very pleasant and deserted anchorage some 5 miles further east, in another Ensenada Honda, still on the former base, but evidently out of the impact area. Here we had a swim and spent a lazy afternoon and night, quite by ourselves. We really enjoy the deserted harbors, where we can watch the birds and the fish, skinny-dip if we want, and not be assailed by someone else's choice of music in the evening.

The next morning we slept in and eventually roused ourselves enough to go around the point to the tiny Puerto Ferro, a cove with a very tight entrance that was billed as bio-luminescent. The cove was another delightful and secluded anchorage, but did not live up to its billing. There was practically no fire in the water, certainly less than off Chebeague on a dark summer night.


The Narrow Entrance to Ensenada Honda - Vieques
I wanted my money back but could not find anyone to give it to me, so we went on to the village of Esperanza, just outside the navy base, and anchored there.

Esperanza is a fishing village with several guest houses for vacationers and apparently a fair-sized group of retired mainlanders. There is also an area on the flats behind the beach where it seems that ordinary people come for vacation, family groups camping in tents.


Dramatic Rock Strata at Puerto Ferro - Vieques
As we walked toward the center of town we saw three horses coming toward us at a gallop, ridden bareback by boys who looked about fifteen, with simple hackamores instead of bridles. The boys sat ramrod-straight and kept their horses under tight control.
Abandoned Lighthouse off Puerto Ferro - Vieques

The Waterfront at Esperanza - Vieques

The next day we had intended to go to Fajardo, where we had a mail stop and intended to rent a car to tour El Yunque, Puerto Rico's rain forest, and Old San Juan, but the more we read about the east coast of Puerto Rico, with its gated condominiums and marinas, the less it seemed to be our kind of place. In the end, we decided to go back to Salinas, where we could safely leave the boat, and rent a car from there, so instead we went back to Puerto Patillas and then to Salinas.


Street, Esperanza - Vieques

Horse at the Beach, Esperanza - Vieques


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